The Bush Telegraph, page 27
‘Oh, hell, Connor. I was drunk. I fell over. She came out of the clinic and asked if I was all right and I said the Min Min knocked me over. It was a joke.’
Connor’s hand was white on the phone from gripping it so hard. ‘And then what?’ He forced his voice to remain calm and measured.
‘I might have said she’d see it if she went for a walk just before the sun came up.’
Connor slammed his other hand down on the steering wheel and Jayden jumped. Christ. He put his hand over the phone, and whispered to his son, ‘Sorry.’
He needed to remain calm. To listen. It was very, very important that he got all the information. He sucked in a breath. ‘Which direction?’ Please God let him give a direction.
‘Towards the mesa behind Mrs Cook’s.’
Connor didn’t waste any more time on his brother. He pressed the ‘end’ button and threw the phone at Jayden, who caught it. ‘Call the police. It’s under P. Give it to me when they answer.’
Connor spun the wheel and the tyres threw a cloud of red dust high into the air as he headed back the other way. His own brother. No. Leave this for later. He had to find Bridget before it was too late. There was barely any shade out that way.
Fifteen minutes later, it was Jayden who saw the small bump on the horizon under the spindly overhang of a ragged acacia. Connor followed his son’s finger, pressed his foot to the floor and barrelled towards it. In his gut he knew it was Bridget.
In his gut he knew it was probably too late.
Chapter Forty-seven
Maddy
Phyllis and Rita arrived back in Spinifex at twelve-thirty. They found Maddy in the emergency room. Rita looked frantically around and then shared a glance with Phyllis. They both realised Bridget hadn’t been found.
Tears ran down Rita’s face and smudged the mascara under her red glasses.
Phyllis stopped six inches from Maddy and said, ‘What do you want us to do?’
At first, Maddy’s mind went blank. Then someone else seemed to speak for her. ‘Take over if anyone comes in.’ Maddy’s hands stilled and she raised her face to the two women. ‘Help me save Bridget.’ She met Phyllis’s eyes and the same strange voice said, ‘She’ll be dehydrated. Delirious. Her skin will be hot and burnt. Her breathing rapid and her heart racing. At the most serious, she will have heart arrhythmias and renal failure. Time will be crucial.’
Phyllis said, ‘Rehydration. Potassium. We learned about this yesterday with severe D&V in children. We can help.’
Rita said, ‘Who’s out looking?’
‘Everyone. The whole town.’ Maddy’s voice broke on the last word.
The sound of her phone ringing snapped Maddy’s focus. Connor’s number was flashing on the screen. Answering it frantically, Maddy put it on loudspeaker. Her hand shook too much to put it near her ear. Everyone strained to hear his voice. ‘Maddy. I’ve got her . . .’
Maddy’s heart jumped into overdrive and the words flew out. ‘She’s alive?’
There was a hesitation, and as she waited, her heart slowly broke into a thousand pieces.
No, no, no, no.
Connor’s voice barely registered as Maddy began to grieve for her daughter.
‘She’s alive, Maddy, just. I need to concentrate and drive to get her to you as fast as I can.’
Maddy put one hand on the wall, the one holding the phone she put over her mouth.
Phyllis came in behind her and took the phone. ‘How long till you get here?’
‘Ten minutes, max. I have to go.’
‘Drive carefully.’ The phone disconnected.
‘And fast,’ Rita whispered. Phyllis and Rita looked at each other.
‘Only just alive.’ Maddy repeated the words and her ears buzzed. She felt like someone had wrapped her in a ball of cotton wool that she couldn’t hear through. Which was maybe for the best so she wouldn’t hear the worst.
She leaned against the wall to keep herself from falling down. She couldn’t think what to do. She’d seen people who died from dehydration. And they had started out alive in her level-six hospital.
Only just alive.
She’d saved countless people in her life. Probably hundreds. What if she couldn’t save her own daughter?
‘Maddy?’ Phyllis’s voice seemed to be coming down a long tunnel and she could only vaguely hear her words. ‘We need to move.’
Rita took her arm and she steered her towards a chair.
Maddy heard Phyllis in the distance. ‘Maddy. You should contact Mount Isa. Get them on board.’
‘Good idea,’ Rita said.
Maddy stood up slowly. The chair was too close to the bed where they would lay her. She leaned back against the wall and watched the clock.
What if she couldn’t save her?
Phyllis narrowed her eyes at her, then jerked her head. ‘Get Maddy a drink of water. I’m gonna ring Mount Isa.’
When the doctor came online, Phyllis already had the telehealth screen up and running so they could all be seen.
‘It’s Phyllis Pemberton. Nurse at Spinifex. We’ve had a little girl lost since daybreak this morning. Eleven years old. They just found her. She should be here in ten minutes. She’s critical.’
‘Where’s your nurse practitioner, Phyllis?’
Maddy saw Phyllis point to the wall where she was leaning, disconnected from the scene. She heard her say, ‘It’s Madison’s daughter.’
There was silence on the other end. ‘Just to check your staffing level there. Two nurses and Madison. Correct?’ the doctor asked.
‘Yes,’ said Phyllis. ‘Rita and me.’
‘Can either of you cannulate a child?’
‘We could try,’ Rita said.
‘Unlikely,’ Phyllis countered. ‘But Sister Locke could.’ She turned the monitor so the doctor could see Maddy. ‘She’s here,’ Phyllis said, ‘but I think she’s in shock.’
Maddy tried to answer, but her mouth wouldn’t work. Her mouth might not work ever again after her daughter was brought in if she couldn’t save her.
A few seconds passed and then the doctor said, ‘We’ll leave that issue for a minute. What have you got ready?’
Phyllis went through the fluid bags, the primed lines ready to plug into a cannula as soon as they could manage to insert one into a dehydrated vein, which wouldn’t be easy. She listed the drugs Maddy had prepared to deal with the possible cardiac arrhythmias that severe dehydration could cause. She pointed to the freezer bags that froze into chemical cold packs on twisting. She checked off the fan, the bowl of cool water, the damp towels on the bed. The cup with a straw if the patient could drink.
‘All good. I’ll phone back as soon as your patient arrives. We’ll get the aircraft in the air and a paediatric specialist on the line. Leave the screen on.’
Phyllis nodded as a car pulled up outside. ‘It might be them now.’
Maddy sprang off the wall, but her legs wobbled as if they could barely hold her weight. She cannoned off the reception desk then the chairs in her directionless haste, and by the time she’d pushed the door open, Connor was beside her, almost running, with a limp and unconscious Bridget in his arms.
Maddy’s hand covered her mouth. She reached for her daughter, but Connor kept moving.
‘She needs help now, Maddy! Come on!’
Maddy followed, her eyes caught on her daughter’s lustrous red hair tumbling down from Connor’s elbow. She was very, very pale, and patches of her skin were blistered and grey. Maddy could see ominous signs of shock from where she stood. And the limp fingers that trailed as Connor lay her daughter on the resus bed were those of a child at death’s door. Oh God. Maddy’s heart pounded as she fought to separate the mother from the nurse. She had to do this. Nobody else could.
The phone rang and Phyllis snatched it up, put it on loudspeaker, then she put it down to connect the leads to the little girl’s chest and arms and fingers while she stripped her of her clothes and pulled a damp sheet over her.
Rita had begun to pack wrapped ice bags around Bridget. Under her armpits. Behind her neck. On each side of her groin.
‘Sister Locke!’ The doctor’s voice cracked like a whip, and Maddy’s head lifted. ‘I need you to assess the patient.’
Suddenly, her brain cleared. The patient. This was the patient.
She walked to the bed and ran her hands over her daughter’s hot, dry, shrunken arms, with a clinical detachment that scared the hell out of her. She then pinched the skin at her clavicle and noted with a deep wrench the fold of skin that stayed vertical when she let go. ‘The patient is moribund and critically dehydrated. Second-degree burns on all exposed skin. No skin turgor.’ Her voice was flat, disconnected.
She glanced at the racing monitor. ‘Heart rate a hundred and eighty. Can’t get a blood pressure yet. Rapid, irregular respirations and chest barely rising.’
The cardiac rhythm streamed across the screen too fast, with the alarm blinking a silenced, frustrated red, not allowed to wail its warning because Phyllis had pressed mute, so they could hear the doctor.
‘Can you cannulate?’
‘There’s nothing to cannulate.’ Maddy’s voice faltered.
‘Intraosseous access then.’ The order came from the screen. Phyllis’s head jerked and she reached for a lower cupboard and pulled out a tray. The nurse began to assemble and open the packets. They would have to inject directly into the marrow of the bone to give them an entry into the blood system. No time for local anaesthetic. It was the only way to hydrate Bridget.
‘Sister Locke!’ the doctor’s stern voice ordered. ‘Please insert an intraosseous infusion cannula into this patient’s tibial bone below the knee.’ He went on to describe the gauge of the needle, the site, the way to strap, and somewhere Maddy’s brain was screaming, Just do it! Do it! ‘You will have to place some pressure on the fluid bag. Remember, IO infusions are slow.’
As she began to follow the instructions, working methodically, she chanted, Treat the patient. The patient. She’d done this before and she could do it now. She didn’t have room for emotions.
When she was done, a sigh rippled around the room as the fluid began to drip enthusiastically from the flask into the child on the bed.
‘Now try a cannula in the cubital fossa.’
Holding Bridget’s arm, Maddy slipped the tourniquet up high, straightened her daughter’s hot elbow and took the cannula from Phyllis. A vein presented itself and the cannula was placed. Maddy drew off some blood and handed it to Phyllis. ‘Put these in the machine to test, please. Chem 20 and Chem 8. We need to know what her electrolytes are doing.’ The blood seemed sluggish and dark. Don’t think about it.
Phyllis, who was steady as rock in the background as she opened packets and drew up drugs, murmured something to Rita, who scribbled notes furiously to record all fluids, drugs and readings from the monitors of Bridget’s observations.
At the head of the bed, Rita had stationed Connor with the bowl of water they had readied to bathe Bridget’s skin and cool her. As they worked, he’d wipe Bridget’s face and neck with one cool washer, then drop it into the bowl, and then squeeze out the second and begin his wiping all over again.
As she watched all three people in the room with her, Maddy realised they were all working together and she wasn’t alone trying to save her daughter. Everyone here was sharing that accountability.
Abruptly, the noise in the room came back to Maddy. Before where there had been a vacuum, with only the sharp tone of the doctor breaking through, her brain switched on.
She glanced at the monitor. For the first time in a long time, she spoke. ‘She’s having arrhythmias.’ She looked at the istat printout that Phyllis handed her. Spoke to the screen. ‘Her potassium is six point one, bicarbonate eighteen and sodium one-twenty.’
‘We need to correct those electrolytes,’ the doctor ordered. He gave the drugs and dosages and Maddy checked with Phyllis, then gave the medication through the IV line.
Bridget’s heart settled with the slow rehydration, but her pulse was still way too high in rate. Her core temperature, which had been forty-one degrees Celsius, had come down to thirty-nine. They’d inserted a catheter but she was barely producing urine. Her colour was slowly improving – she was no longer grey, but still horribly pale.
There was a small twitch in one of Bridget’s fingers and the breath puffed out of Maddy’s chest as if someone had squeezed her like a plastic toy.
Hope.
Maddy went on doing what she had to do. Obeying orders. Completing every task like an automaton. She didn’t know how long they worked on Bridget. Time was nothing. Phyllis kept handing her instruments, drugs, fluids, and Rita kept scribbling. And slowly, Bridget’s heart rate came down and her respirations grew deeper and marginally slower.
Still, Bridget didn’t open her eyes, even though her body twitched.
There was a commotion at the door and Lizzie the flight nurse hurried in, followed closely behind by a woman Maddy didn’t know.
‘This is Dr Roberts, Maddy. We’re here to help.’
Maddy’s hand stilled. Then her fingers began to shake.
Help? Help was here?
Maddy opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She had nothing left to give as her eyes closed and she swayed. She didn’t feel Connor catch her.
The aircraft took off an hour later with Bridget, Maddy, Lizzie and the doctor, and there was finally hope that Bridget would pull through.
The plan involved an immediate flight course straight to Brisbane, where Bridget would be assessed for organ failure. She would need resuscitative dialysis for acute renal failure until her kidneys began to work again.
Connor followed them out to the airport and kissed Maddy on the cheek as she squeezed his hand.
‘Thank you.’ Her haunted eyes searched his face. ‘For finding her.’
‘You tell Bridget that Jayden found her. I was just the driver.’
When Connor returned to Spinifex, he wanted to drive the twenty hours through to Brisbane with his foot hard on the accelerator. He wanted to pummel his brother until he was a bleeding mess on the ground. He wanted to be with Maddy. But he couldn’t do any of those things, so he pulled in at the health centre, where the nurses were still restocking, to pick up his son.
Jayden had nursed the critical Bridget on the way in, holding her hot body against his in the front seat. They hadn’t wanted to lay her down in the back and Jayden had been amazing. His son would need to talk about the trauma of all that.
Now, in the corner of the waiting room, Jayden sat alone and stiff in his seat. His young eyes looked red-rimmed and his mouth sat tight and hard.
Connor crossed the room.
Jayden launched himself and Connor pulled him into his arms and hugged him. ‘Good job nursing her on the way in, son. They think she’s going to make it.’
‘Then let’s go to Brisbane.’ Jayden’s voice cracked. ‘I want to be in Brisbane when she wakes up. We should be with Maddy.’
Connor wanted that more than anything in the world. ‘We can’t do that, mate. You’ve got school tomorrow and we have a station to run. Animals that depend on us.’
‘Stuff school. And the station will survive.’ He didn’t say Bridget might not.
Connor tried to reason with him. With himself. ‘We have to look after Belle’s dogs as well as our own.’
‘Alf can do that.’
Connor looked at his son and for the first time saw a reflection of his own hard determination when things needed sorting. His anger eased a little and relief began to seep into him. To hell with everything. He nodded. ‘Okay. We’ll drive to Mount Isa and get the morning plane. It would still be quicker than driving. We can organise to be back here in two days. Let’s go.’
Chapter Forty-eight
Maddy
The flight had been fraught, with Bridget’s condition still touch and go, but by the time they landed her observations had stabilised and she recognised her mother and was able to talk a little through cracked lips smeared with lanolin. Lizzie and Dr Roberts had been amazing and Maddy’s throat stung when her new friends had to leave to fly back to base.
‘Thank you both.’
‘You did most of it before we got there. She’s like her mother. Tough.’ Lizzie gripped Maddy’s shoulder and kissed her quickly on the cheek. ‘I’m sure we’ll see each other soon.’
While they settled Bridget into intensive care, Maddy showered at the accommodation provided by the hospital for outreach families and put her dirty clothes back on. That took barely ten minutes in her state of agitation.
The staff in the intensive-care unit had asked for an hour before she went back.
Maddy found her way to see Belle in the neonatal intensive-care unit to check on baby James, and slipped a clean hospital gown over her clothes to shield the unit from any germs she might bring in the door.
The bells and beeps and feeble baby cries of a remembered environment soothed her for a brief moment. Then the anxiety surged again.
She probably wasn’t a fit visitor; however, Belle seemed glad to see her when she noticed her arrival. The new mum had been staring into the crib where James was sleeping, connected to a host of monitors.
She jumped up. ‘Maddy! How is she? Kyle told me about Bridget on the phone.’
‘She’s going to be fine.’ Maddy said it firmly. As if she could make it happen just by saying it out loud. It was so much better than the things she’d been saying to herself before Bridget was found.
Her heart began to pound again and she took a deep breath. ‘She’ll be fine,’ she repeated. ‘She’s in the best place, but I can’t go back for another half an hour, so I thought I’d come see you.’
‘Of course.’ Belle pointed to the spare chair. ‘Sit down. You must be exhausted.’
Maddy looked at the chair. ‘I can’t just yet.’ She couldn’t sit still. ‘Maybe next time I come.’ She pointed to the crib. ‘He looks gorgeous.’
